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Hello Everyone! As usual the club had a great showing at the Blessing of the Fleet 10 Miler on Friday, July 24th. Many fantastic performances and age group winners. Well done and congratulations! For the month of July, the Runner Spotlight goes to Lisa Garzilli. Lisa crushed the Blessing of the Fleet 10 Miler, running 1:18:54 @ 7:53 pace (first sub 8 min blessing!) This put her 10th in her age group out of 243. Congratulations Lisa! We hope to see everyone at the Battle of Stongington 5K on Tuesday, August 18th at 6:00pm. You can register here. Home – The Battle of Stonington 5k. The group will car pool leaving from Camires around 4:30pm and then stop for dinner on the way home. It is a fun race and a guaranteed good time! Stay tuned for a follow up email.

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We have a lot of stuff: Flags, vests, tents, cones, mile marks, tables, chairs, signs, water jugs, water bottles, shirts, awards, frisbees, a banner, buckets of rocks, and so on. We keep our stuff in a 10’x20′ storage unit, and yesterday we moved our stuff from such a unit in Wakefield to one in Narragansett. Thanks to Fred for taking the lead on securing a new storage unit and terminating our contract on the old, thanks to Peter, Mike, and Dan for building storage shelves in the new unit, and thanks to Pat, Brian, Dan, Fred, and Mike for helping with the move. Pictures of the move are below.

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The Rhode Island Desert is a complex of sand dunes located just off of Division road in West Greenwich. In running lore, The Desert was the training ground for more than a few legendary Providence College runners. It’s no surprise, then, that Brian regularly takes his teams to train in the desert. The Desert looks innocent enough from the roads, but after a few miles of up and down the steep dunes, you get it.

Not content with simply running in The Desert, Brian designed a 5K course, which was then professionally measured. Due to a slight change in the course, a new measurement was required, and the pictures below show elements of the measurement.

Brian taking sights at mile 3.

Mike rolling the wheel down a hill near mile 1.

A counter is attached to the front wheel of the bike, which must be calibrated before (and sometimes after) a measurement. For this measurement, the bike was walked the whole way. Rolling the wheel up some of the steep dunes required both Mike and Brian to hold onto the bike. The likelihood of slipping was so great that it was important that a second hand was on the bike to keep it in place.

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Running in groups engenders camaraderie; more so when we train for the same race; still more so when that race is a marathon; and even more so when that race requires several nights away. Indeed, as we speckled Burlington—one, two, three, and four at a time—our anxiety was soothed by the knowledge that we would soon see our friends. Thus, Dave, Jess, Kyle, Rich, Diane, Kaela, Brian, and Mike competed together in the 2015 Vermont City Marathon. Great race, great course, great town, unforgettable experience. It’s a beautiful thing when you can fall short of your goal (as most of us did), yet reminisce over it with a sparkle in your eye. Let this not be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

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“A good long run requires more time to plan than to execute.” –Anonymous

Long runs can be boring, but they don’t have to be. To combat boredom, the runner has two primary weapons in his arsenal: company and variety. It is a bitter irony, though, that the implementation of the latter diminishes the former. It is a simple mathematical fact, then, that THE MOST INTERESTING RUN EVER will have zero attendance.

Flying in the face mathematics, however, Brian organized THE MOST INTERESTING RUN EVER, and three people attended: Brian, Mike, and Mark. (Mark deserves special recognition for making THE MOST INTERESTING RUN EVER his first run with the club.) These three runners boarded the 11-a.m. ferry in Pt. Judith, bound for Block Island, and enjoyed a not-so-bumpy ride to the island. What follows is a short picture-narrative of the run.

One logistical concern dealt with the question of where to stash bags. (Mark boldly embarked on this 8-hour adventure in running singlet, shorts, and shoes, with no luggage.) The Visitor’s Center was open, but was to close at 3:00 p.m., so the runners made use of the nice rack behind the building.

Outdoor rack

The run began in Old Harbor and ran toward the north end of the island.

Early in the run: Mark running north

At about three miles into the run, the route turned right onto the Clay Head Nature Trail. It was a beautiful day and the views from the high bluffs were spectacular. (Mike and Brian were, at this point, ahead of Mark. The two groups didn’t meet again until after the run.)

The trailhead

View from the Clay Head Trail

Running along the Clay Head Trail

Exiting the trails, the runners turned again north and followed the road to its end, at which there is a good view of the North Light in the distance.

The North Light

Mile 6 through 11 took the runners back south and through the middle of the island, past the airport, taking a right onto Cherry Hill Rd. at Rodman’s Hollow. The left onto Lewis Farm Rd. began a fascinating and breathtaking three-mile journey through Ireland-like fields and stone walls, then onto and along the rugged south beach that is towered over by high bluffs.

Ireland I

Ireland II

Running along the south beach

The beach run was about two miles of slow going to the Mohegan Bluffs at Southeast Light. To get off the beach and back onto the roads, the runners scrambled up to the steep stairs, and (in a quad-burning burst of adrenaline) ran every step to the top.

The bottom end of the stairs

Once on the roads, the quads eventually recovered enough for Brian to push the pace for the last three miles (all of which were close to six-minute miles). The Visitor’s Center and bag rack were a welcome sight after the 18-mile run, and the runners enjoyed hearty refreshment at the Mohegan Cafe.

Mohegan Cafe (with one of the three runners menu-browsing )

With 30 minutes to kill and $8 of change, the runners found an open candy store. The sign in front advertised free fudge, but it was not free, so an $8 bag of random chocolates (including a piece of chocolate-covered bacon) served as dessert.

The warm ferry ride home was smooth and uneventful, and thus ended THE MOST INTERESTING RUN EVER.

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On Sunday, 12/28/14, Brian and I ran from downtown Coventry to Rte. 102 via the Washington Secondary Trail: an impressive new multi-use path that connects Cranston to Coventry along an abandoned rail corridor. Our route was an out-and-back, with the turn-around point being about 0.3 miles west of Rte. 102: at the Summit General Store in Greene, RI.

The Summit General Store

From the turn-around point, we saw that the paved path continue west, but how far west? We set out to explore this question on Wednesday, 1/31/14, meeting at the Summit General Store at 11:33am to run west to the CT border. There was designated parking for path users, which averted any anxiety that might have come with utilizing the store parking.

Parking area for path users

We stepped out onto the path, and turned west to find an immediate answer to our question: The paved path ends about 100 meters west of the Summit General Store.

The end of the paved part of the Washington Secondary Trail

We had been looking over satellite images since Sunday’s run, and it was clear that, paved or not, the trail continued west, so west we went. The path was wide and clear, and usually straight and level, as far as the eye could see. Some sections contain a regular pattern of bumps, separated by about 5-10 meters, and with heights varying from very small to about one meter. These so-called “doop de doos” were initially annoying, then funny. Is there a training benefit to running this terrain? We don’t yet know the answer, but the soreness in my glutes might be a clue.

A few short sections were flooded out, forcing us to run around the frozen edges of the puddles. Several times we had to abandon the trail altogether, but at these points there were clear secondary trails that ran alongside the main path.

Some doop de doos hold water

We encountered an obstacle at about 2.2 miles: an abandoned iron bridge. The bridge once carried trains over a river, but only the truss remains. We tiptoed carefully across the truss (not looking down). In the photograph, you can see a granite stone that has somehow fallen onto the truss. The stone bears word “ZEPPELIN,” written as graffiti.

The Zeppelin Bridge

The next bridge crossing occurred at 3.3 miles. This bridge was much higher than the Zeppelin bridge (approximately 60 feet high compared with perhaps 15 feet) and spanned a more substantial waterway.

The 3.3 bridge

Looking down from the 3.3 bridge

A train cannot climb anything but gradual hills, so railways are necessarily quite flat. As a consequence, the railway bed is often built up quite high in low areas, offering scenic views of the surroundings. The photo below was taken at about 3.7 miles, where Carbuncle Pond can be seen beyond the marshy area.

A view of Carbuncle Pond from the heights of the trail.

We estimated our pace to be about 8 min/mile, and, from the time, we estimated that we were closing in on the CT border. We expected no “Welcome to Connecticut” sign, so our plan was to was to turn around when we reached Plainfield Pike, which we knew to be just across the CT border. We first spied Plainfield Pike through an opening in the trees that, in an erie way, appeared perfectly circular from a distance. Looking through the circular hole and seeing cars pass confirmed our conjecture that we had, indeed, passed into CT and wer

Plainfield Pike in the distance

Crossing Plainfield Pike

We decided to cross Plainfield Pike and continue on the path for a few more minutes, turning around at 0:47:00 on the watch. On the way back, we stopped in Greene (RI) center and took a few pictures.

Map showing Coventry in relation to Rhode Island and Greene in relation to Coventry

We learned, from a monument placard, that Greene was once a rail stop along the Washington Secondary Trail, with the rail built in the early 1850s.

Greene center

Monument to the rail

We completed the return trip in fewer minutes than the outbound trip, and called the total distance 12 miles. The Summit General Store claims to be Rhode Island’s only real general store, and we saw no reason to disagree. There was no indoor seating, but they did serve food and coffee, so we each purchased a muffin and coffee, got in our cars, and drove home. (The muffins were delicious, by the way.)